heaven! What masticators!--/What bread--!

and so as he finished the last mouthful of it, we entered the town of
Montreuil.

Chapter 3.XCII.

There is not a town in all France which, in my opinion, looks better in
the map, than Montreuil;--I own, it does not look so well in the book
of post-roads; but when you come to see it--to be sure it looks most
pitifully.

There is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and that
is, the inn-keeper's daughter: She has been eighteen months at Amiens,
and six at Paris, in going through her classes; so knits, and sews, and
dances, and does the little coquetries very well.--

--A slut! in running them over within these five minutes that I have
stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a white
thread stocking--yes, yes--I see, you cunning gipsy!--'tis long and
taper--you need not pin it to your knee--and that 'tis your own--and
fits you exactly.--

--That Nature should have told this creature a word about a statue's
thumb!

--But as this sample is worth all their thumbs--besides, I have her
thumbs and fingers in at the bargain, if they can be any guide to
me,--and as Janatone withal (for that is her name) stands so well for
a drawing--may I never draw more, or rather may I draw like a
draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my life,--if I do not
draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if
I had her in the wettest drapery.--

--But your worships chuse rather that I give you the length, breadth,
and perpendicular height of the great parish-church, or drawing of the
facade of the abbey of Saint Austreberte which has been transported
from Artois hither--every thing is just I suppose as the masons and
carpenters left them,--and if the belief in Christ continues so long,
will be so these fifty years to come--so your worships and reverences
may all measure them at your leisures--but he who measures thee,
Janatone, must do it now--thou carriest the principles of change within
thy frame; and considering the chances of a transitory life, I would not
answer for thee a moment; ere twice twelve months are passed and gone,
thou mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose thy shapes--or thou mayest
go off like a flower, and lose thy beauty--nay, thou mayest go off like
a hussy--and lose thyself.--I would not answer for my aunt Dinah,
was she alive--'faith, scarce for her picture--were it but painted by
Reynolds--

B